Trying to shift my schedule a little earlier and go for a walk in the morning. Yesterday: a real garden bed. Sang gently tried turning the bed knobs, just in case, but no go.
Today’s walk was rainy; I listened to Detransition, Baby. Although they’re not the main attraction, there are slapstick moments that slay me. I’m going to listen to more tonight while I cook lunches for the week.
Yesterday morning I got my first Covid-19 vaccine dose at the local Walgreens. The setup was not a well-oiled machine like the mass vaccination site as described by sanguinity; it was the regular Walgreens pharmacy experience with a few extra folding chairs at the ends of the aisles. After my shot there was no 15-minute holding pen– I was told to walk around the store for 15 minutes before taking off. I read terrible greeting cards and bought some leftover peeps at 50% off. I’ve had no side effects except a sore arm like I get after a flu shot. It’s all very ordinary for being so extraordinary.
Rabbit rabbit! No actual rabbits pictured; this is my customary photo of our nearest neighborhood park on New Year’s Day. Cloudy and mild today.
Last night Sanguinity and I went out to the street at midnight to look at some of the fireworks we were hearing in the blocks around us. Then I could hear Canada geese overhead too. I hope they were able to resettle quickly.
One of the reasons I resist New Year’s resolutions is that I tend that way anyway and am in the middle of a bunch of campaigns:
So adding anything because it’s January 1st, no.
We were all set for New Year’s Day good-luck food, but as it turns out the can of black-eyed peas had a 2012 expiration date and the collard greens were yellow at the top. Is this symbolic? Is the fact that we ate them and they were fine?
Now for a full weekend after this quiet holiday. Luxury.
The Twelve Days of Christmas is usually a lie I tell myself as I fail at thinking of presents and posting cards and packages and decorating and baking so that everything is in place no later than the morning of December 25th. As things slip, I go, “Christmas is really twelve days, I can send New Years cards instead,” et cetera, but then actually as of the 26th it’s over and I uncomfortably forget what I haven’t done. I hate feeling behind, and Christmas is pretty much a month of feeling behind, starting in late November.
This year I’m conducting the experiment of treating the twelve days of Christmas like it’s for real. The post office is running late anyway, and I have way more days off work after (the first day of) Christmas than before it. Today is the sixth day of Christmas. Christmas is half over, half yet to go. I’m writing “Merry Christmas!” to people (who celebrate Christmas) without waffling about sorry-it’s-late. I unwrapped my chocolate orange after dinner tonight. (Granted, I have it now because I forgot I had it on the first day of Christmas.) Mostly, I’m trying to operate in that holiday sense of time where you can do pointless fun things and there’s no list, or at least not a fixed and urgent one. We’re still in a pandemic and I think officially supposed to be gentle with ourselves when possible? so it seems like a good time to try it.
This is harder on days I’m working, did you ever notice that jobs really cut into one’s free time? but we’ll see how it goes. I’m also enjoying New Year’s being just a slightly differently flavored couple of days in the middle of Christmas, stripped of all that anxious resolution to start something off right.
This Texas Monthly piece from April has been on my mind. It reminded me of the older women I’ve known who have their hair done for years and years by the same person, or who have their routines and never use the shower or the whirlpool bath or whatever at their own houses. I feel fondness and respect for this lady’s generosity in sharing a small adventure.
With Salons Closed, an 89-Year-Old Houston Woman Washes Her Own Hair for the First Time in Decades
(ETA: just reread the scene in Ramona and Her Father about Mrs. Swink and the tin can stilts. Same energy!)
More recently, the Yuletide collection opened! My favorite fic from the kidlit canon so far is this one:
The Queen’s Lover [authors are still anonymous]
Fandom: The President’s Daughter series, by Ellen Emerson White
F/F, General Audiences [I would rate it Teen], Beth Shulman / Meghan Powers, Best Friends, Falling in Love
4138 words
The tough-as-nails dialogue expressing unshakeable love while remaining extremely cool is spot. on.
On a day when minds are on the big picture, let me tell you the best tiny thing I’ve started doing: standing up in the middle of the room when putting my shoes on or taking them off.
I read this tip on a physical therapy site and regret to say I can’t figure out which one, to give credit.
Especially with my pair of Hokas that has unstretchy collars and must be tied and untied every time, I get a few seconds of back relaxation and hamstring stretch reaching down to the laces, and a few seconds of balance practice standing on one foot at a time while getting the other foot in or out of the shoe.
I did say tiny thing! But it’s several times a day and takes essentially no extra time or motivation. In my current physical state (sound but sedentary) it’s working for me.
This is the one full-size tomato that made it from seed to ripe in our garden this year. (The cherry tomato seedling our CSA gave us did much better.)
The seeds came from a neighbor’s seed library, when stores and nurseries were closed and everything mail-order was sold out. We nursed them along on the windowsill, where they were too chilly and dim to be happy, then in pots outside the back door, where ditto, then in the garden that’s partially shaded by a pine tree.
Sang and I did get one dinner of fried green tomatoes from the garden as well. And the CSA gave us green ones too this week! Tomatoes have always been the one thing we have to grow, since green ones aren’t even at the farmers market.
So I’m proud of this tomato that marks the end of the year. (Today I walked past a pink rose that still had a scent–but I also brought the pumpkins in for roasting.) Maybe I should save its seeds, for us and the seed library.
The cyclamen are naturalizing in the back yard. In Colorado I knew them only in pots for the winter holiday season, so I get a kick out of seeing them make it on their own here. Little flames.
I am still feeling the relief and gladness of being able to go outside and see blue sky, or clouds that have shapes, or sunlight, instead of staying inside and breathing as little as possible because of the toxic haze of wildfire smoke. That was a hard week. Now the season has turned and the days are shorter, but we get another week of warm sun.
Picking up library holds is by appointment now, across a table blocking the entryway to the library. Tonight I will get Rocketman on DVD, The Evidence of Things Not Seen in print, and the sequel to a DVD about Dick Proenneke, who built a cabin by hand in what is now part of Lake Clark National Park in Alaska, when he was about my age in the late 1960s, and lived there for thirty years or so.
Questions courtesy of f.riday5.com:
I walked down through the college campus this morning. One of my last chances to do so for awhile: next month campus will close to casual public traffic because students are coming back in person.
A weathergram is ephemeral, but these days it feels on the long side of ephemeral. This one was hung in October for the inauguration of the new college president; I wonder what it will mean by the time it’s delivered.